Back from holiday. Had a good week's walking. Only 1 wet day which is a success for The Lake District!

Malaya:

More troops are ashore at Malacca (about 2/3 of them now). Malacca was easily taken and the 1st Raiding Rgt was destroyed in it's capture wiping out 450 enemies. Engineers are commencing work on the AF's (currently level 1) and forts. Fighters should be landed and active within 2 days.

Interestingly SS Cero spotted a probable CV TF heading west past Luzon. They'll probably be on the scene within 2-3 days. By then potentially 100 x P47/P51 will be active from Malacca to bolster my CV fighters. Could be fun :-)

A small 2 x DD TF was also located off Batavia and attacked by an SBD Sqn from Oosthaven. DD Fujinami was reported heavily damaged by a bomb hit.

September was an active month with further invasions in CentPac (Tinian/Guam), Ternate in southern SRA and at Malacca in Malaya. The only Japanese responses, to date, to these invasions have been with airpower (which has been ineffective and not hit anything) and the damnable submarines which have been more successful (the most successful sinking CV Wasp).

Ternate and Malacca fell quickly but the Japs are stubbornly resisting on both Tinian and Guam.

The plans for October are the taking of Tinian and Guam, further invasions in southern SRA (Morotai, Talaud and Manado) and the follow up invasion in Malaya at Mersing.

The existing troops at Malacca will hold tight to build up the base and to gauge what Faber will do.

A poor month for my subs though. Much fewer sightings and less successful attacks. I'd have a guess this is due to a combination of factors (a reduction of enemy held territory and oilfields means fewer enemy convoys and this means more subs in a limited area for the ASW assets to detect and sink them).

In terms of reinforcements October will see the arrival of TBM-3's for the US and Seafire L.III's and Thud II's for the Brits. On sea CV Indefatigable, BB King George V, CL Astoria II and 8 x SS are the highlights.

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Points:

Allies: +1,761 points Japanese: +1,073 points

Bases:

Allies: +3 (+205 points) Japanese: -3 (-395 points)

Planes:

Allies: +725 lost Japanese: +969 lost

Troops:

Allies: +98 lost Japanese: +177 lost

Ships:

Allies: +30 lost (+645 points. CV Wasp, 5 x SS, 2 by Subs, a bunch by collision and the rest by the ridiculously overpowered MTB's.) Japanese: +72 lost (+434 points. Many of these by Allied CV air around the Mariana's, 6 x SS and the rest by subs).

An empty Morotai was taken by Cavalry Cdo troops on the 4th. Once supply is unloaded ships will head back to Ambon to load up troops for Manado.

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Darwin:

Never been too fussed with this region but with the Jap positions in retreat everywhere I decided to push into northern Australia after building up the bases in central Aus to support greater supply flow.

Darwin has been cut off and recon indicates the main enemy unit is 20th Division. Attacks go in tomorrow with support from over 100 x B24J.

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Sumatra:

Either the Japs became desperate at Palembang or Faber thought I had abandoned Palembang as all of the Jap forces at Palembang flung themselves over the river SW into the Allied defences. It was a calamity from their perspective:

More than happy with this. Allied forces (from Djambi. 550 x AV) will be in Palembang in 2 days time and will then cut off the Jap forces for annihilation.

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Malaya:

Strangely enough no Jap response here. I wonder if the economic conditions are kicking in now. The final equipment is being unloaded at Malacca. Can't wait for it to be off and then we'll head back to pick up the next phase of troops at Oosthaven.

Malacca has level 3 forts and will be at level 2 AF in 3 days. Once that happens I'll have 100 x frontline fighters on CAP.

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Submarine Warfare:

1 x dud/missed attack.

SS Jallao sank AK Yamakaze Maru near Jesselton on the 1st.

SS Cero claimed DD Amagiri sank with a torpedo NW of Luzon.

SS Salmon sank TK Sekino Maru near Sapporo on the 2nd.

SS Baya heavily damaged AK Sydney Maru with a torpedo near Soerabaya.

On the other side SS Seawolf and SS Tullibee were sunk by ASW escorts.

Yeah, counter attacking dug in Allied troops late in game seems a bad idea. He's likely at the point where he's just trying anything though since Palembang is shutting down and he knows these troops are doomed anyway.

I noticed his air losses are quite low. Is he not fighting there much anymore?

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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

Yes this is my take on it too. He hasn't tried this elsewhere so why not try it somewhere that is already doomed anyhow!

With regard to air losses - it's in fits and starts. By that I mean Jap production has ground to a halt with Faber admitting the Japs built 10 of planes in total last month! As such I believe Faber leaves what planes he has in the areas he controls and then when I enter that 'space' they'll be frenetic battles with the local air units but there's no replacements to continue the fight!

Yes this is my take on it too. He hasn't tried this elsewhere so why not try it somewhere that is already doomed anyhow!

With regard to air losses - it's in fits and starts. By that I mean Jap production has ground to a halt with Faber admitting the Japs built 10 of planes in total last month! As such I believe Faber leaves what planes he has in the areas he controls and then when I enter that 'space' they'll be frenetic battles with the local air units but there's no replacements to continue the fight!

Wow. You're doing quite well for late 44, already shutting down his airframe production without even having to bomb the factories! Impressive.

He must not have saved HI much. Most Japanese player try to get at least 3 million HI saved by now which can be quite a lot of planes for a good time to come.

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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

Lots of credit to Faber for continuing the game. His economy was really toast from the time he could not evict you from the islands off Sumatra. The oil at Palembang is useless if you cannot dare send tankers/xAKs there. I hope he sticks with it to 1945 - drawing close to Japan and triggering Kamikazes makes for a different game.

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No matter how bad a situation is, you can always make it worse. - Chris Hadfield : An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth

Indeed. Massive credit to Faber for carrying on. It can't be much fun doing nothing! I don't know all of the details other than Faber mentioned he'd taken his eye off the economy for 6 months and when he realised he didn't have enough material it was too late to rectify.

The Japs still stubbornly resist on both Tinian and Guam. Their strength is slowly weakening though and I'm hopeful both Islands will be in Allied hands over the next 7-10 days. The latest attacks will go in tomorrow supported by all of the CV air on hand. Here's the last attacks and strength levels:

The last of the enemy were mopped up over the next 5 days. Troops will now head west to take out the last few Jap held bases in NW Australia.

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Sumatra:

An empty Palembang was entered on the 7th and the remaining Jap troops are now surrounded and will starve outside Praboemoelih. In due course I'll begin to launch probes and then full out attacks once I've continued to bomb the enemy for another 10-14 days.

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Malaya:

The Malacca invasion convoy is now on it's way back to Oosthaven where it will load Phase 2 forces (originally due to land at Mersing but due to the lack of Jap response they'll unload at Malacca and march south towards Johore Bahru). It should be back at Oosthaven on the 12th. Fighters are providing LRCAP over the ships from Sumatran airfields.

By the way I spotted the Jap CV TF at Miri. I wonder if they'll venture westwards to try to attack he retreating transports......

Nice work on Tinian. Every attack that brings down the forts is a good attack! Looks like he is about to fold!

If Faber has indeed really crashed the Jap economy you are going to have a field day bombing the HI without fighter opposition. I´m thinking he is kicking himself for not paying attention to the economy right now. But kudos to him for playing on despite his blunder!

It's very strange that he considers it irrecoverable and can only make 10 planes in a month! I'm failing a bit to understand how this happened.

It must be mainly the lack of oil/fuel reserves to drive the economy. It seems like he would have not shipped enough back the the HI and been surprised by the Sumatra move and closure of oil shipments. I imagine this would also have been compounded by an almost complete lack of HI savings.

In short you must have done a very good job early, forcing him to overuse and overproduce and not focus on saving.

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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

It's very strange that he considers it irrecoverable and can only make 10 planes in a month! I'm failing a bit to understand how this happened.

It must be mainly the lack of oil/fuel reserves to drive the economy. It seems like he would have not shipped enough back the the HI and been surprised by the Sumatra move and closure of oil shipments. I imagine this would also have been compounded by an almost complete lack of HI savings.

In short you must have done a very good job early, forcing him to overuse and overproduce and not focus on saving.

Even without fuel, and oil he should be able to produce planes.

Not know when You land in Sumatra but if that not happen before `44, so at end of `43 he should have at lest 2.000.000 HI in reserve. And HI is only what he need to produce planes.

From 2M HI he should be able to produce 55000 1E planes. Or maybe 30000 if he build also some 2E bombers.

Interesting discussion guys. Unfortunately I can't offer the accompanying data, on the Japanese economy, to be able to help further. Its also tough for me to judge what is and isn't possible as I haven't played the Japanese side much for several years.

I can say that I don't think we've had a heavy combat/attritional type war overall so not sure if I could have attrited his pools that much early on.

if Raver isn't able to produce aircraft then he is doing something wrong or still seriously fails to understand how the system works.

I had a Japanese opponent pushed back to Japan and he told me that if he just halts his nav/merchant/arm/veh production and only uses the fuel/oil he produces in and around Japan (resources are pretty much unlimited anyway) he can still outproduce me in aircraft numbers if he wanted to. I thought he would be pulling my leg but when he finally surrendered he sent me his pw and I took a look at what was left and he was correct!

At the point he was telling me, there has long been no need anymore for merchant/naval factories to producing anything and he had lots of arm/veh pts in the pool and just had no need to really fill out his units anyway the way battles were fought (you invade, kill stuff and it takes too long to rebuild units so that would be a fault late war).

That said, the only way to stop Japan from producing pretty much as many aircraft as they want to is to bomb the factories/engine plants. If he doesn't produce aircraft, his fault.

CT is mostly correct, you can generate about 2000 HI/day if you still control undamaged oil centers in Japan/Korea/MAN/FOR/Kuriles. IF you have built up good stocks of HI and ARM/VEH and engines prior to losing the DEI (Mike Solli school of econ), you can still build a/c like crazy.

However, IF you overbuilt a/c in 42/43, did not get HI/ARM/VEH stockpiled, yeah you are in trouble. You get a ton of units in 44/45 that you desparately need for defense. But if you are low on ARM/VEH, they come in at only 1/3 strength ... essentially just brigades, not ID's.

If Faber can only build 10 ac/day, this is likely what has happened. He doesn't have stockpiles, has to split between AC and ARM, getting not enough of either. rule of thumb is you want at least 4M HI + 500K ARM/VEH in stockpile when you lose DEI as IJ. If this occurs in mid 44, you should be able to fight effectively until the end. If you lose the DEI earlier you would need more stockpiled.

Flip this around for the allies: you need to pressure the IJ so that cannot make their stockpile OR take the DEI sooner than mid-44. As Mike would say: it is all logisitics. The battles are just frosting.

Pax, you have to be joking! No one I've ever seen has anywhere near 4 million HI and 500k (!!!) armaments and vehicles.

I've looked at tracker and if I'm understanding it correctly I should only need another 90k ARM and 35k VEH to fill out what is in the pipeline. Maybe I'm reading or understanding it incorrectly. I'll look at that again and try to do some economics posts in my AAR so we can leave Speedy to talk about more interesting things here!

As for Faber here, yeah, there should have been some even if he wasn't trying if he didn't overproduce airframes and accelerate every single ship early on.

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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

if Raver isn't able to produce aircraft then he is doing something wrong or still seriously fails to understand how the system works.

I had a Japanese opponent pushed back to Japan and he told me that if he just halts his nav/merchant/arm/veh production and only uses the fuel/oil he produces in and around Japan (resources are pretty much unlimited anyway) he can still outproduce me in aircraft numbers if he wanted to. I thought he would be pulling my leg but when he finally surrendered he sent me his pw and I took a look at what was left and he was correct!

At the point he was telling me, there has long been no need anymore for merchant/naval factories to producing anything and he had lots of arm/veh pts in the pool and just had no need to really fill out his units anyway the way battles were fought (you invade, kill stuff and it takes too long to rebuild units so that would be a fault late war).

That said, the only way to stop Japan from producing pretty much as many aircraft as they want to is to bomb the factories/engine plants. If he doesn't produce aircraft, his fault.

Yep, I concur. My scen 2 campaign vs Ark and I am sure he has plenty of aircraft in 6/45. And I killed off his oil production well over a year ago.

That said, it does not bother me much. I am finding that I can always win the air war at the point of attack and really am just using my air to cover my land advances which are going quite well. Have yet to strat bomb a single point in the Home Islands and now am thinking that it may not be worth starting.

Indeed. Massive credit to Faber for carrying on. It can't be much fun doing nothing! I don't know all of the details other than Faber mentioned he'd taken his eye off the economy for 6 months and when he realised he didn't have enough material it was too late to rectify.

Well, he can take some morale boosts from the pasting he's giving me in our game. SYNERGY!

Pax, you have to be joking! No one I've ever seen has anywhere near 4 million HI and 500k (!!!) armaments and vehicles.

I've looked at tracker and if I'm understanding it correctly I should only need another 90k ARM and 35k VEH to fill out what is in the pipeline. Maybe I'm reading or understanding it incorrectly. I'll look at that again and try to do some economics posts in my AAR so we can leave Speedy to talk about more interesting things here!

As for Faber here, yeah, there should have been some even if he wasn't trying if he didn't overproduce airframes and accelerate every single ship early on.

No you are correct, but you need to factor in losses that you must replace. The ground war in 44/46 goes at a horrendous pace, nothing at all like 42/43 which is mostly an airwar with a few naval battles for diversion. You lose 100's of devices every turn ... 100 * 12 = 1200 ARM pts a turn for 600 days ... ~720,000 ARM for loss replacements. So if you enter 44 with 400K, then you still need to build another 320K over 2 years ... or 2M of your stockpiled HI will go to ARM pts. This is what you are preparing for ... and if you can't, then this is when your defense collapses completely and the allies are able to invade the HI. IRL, the IJ did a remarkable job in this respect. They were able to contain the hordes in CHI/MAN/KOR and present a formidable defense. A lot of players overlook this, over build in 42/43 and then suffer a collapse in 45.

It is completely predictable because there is a fixed amount of oil produced in the game, which means there is a maximum HI that the IJ can produce. The game reality is that you only are able to achieve an percentage of that maximum ... better players will get more. Knowing this though, you can then also calculate what you need to survive to '46. You then build your expenditure model backwards from there based upon an assumed total HI that you will produce. You can expend more only when you play better than your original assumption. simple.

Faber flew in more planes to Saipan and Pagan. They tried to break through the massed Allied CAP one last time before Guam fell but were unsuccessful losing c.150 planes to 20 Allied.

The stubborn resistance at Guam finally ended and Guam fell to the Allies on 18th October! It took 23 days to take Guam. With both Tinian and Guam in Allied hands the rest of the fleets began to head back to PH to rest, repair, upgrade and begin loading for the next invasions......

Both Tinian and Guam have over 250 Allied aircraft of all types and can comfortably keep the Jap held bases in the area supressed. I'll soon fly in B29's to begin attacks on Japan.

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SRA:

The invasion of Sidate began on the 17th and the unoccupied base was taken quickly. Allied soldiers and equipment are still coming ashore. Once the unloading is complete the men will march NE to take Manado.

2 x CVE TF's have provided air cover and 2 x SC TF provided sea cover. Both have been needed as the Japanese reacted.

A small CV Battle was fought on 18th October as the, presumably, remaining Jap CV's moved from Brunei south to a position west of Mindanao. My CVE's were off the beaches at Sidate and an ineffectual CV battle took place:

TBM's located the fleeing Jap TF in the daylight and reported finishing off CL Tama and sinking CL Yubari south of Mindanao.

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Malaya/Sumatra:

All quiet here as I dig in at Malacca and expand the facilities waiting the 2nd phase reinforcements which will arrive by sea on the 21st/22nd October. Once they do I'll move southwards to take Singapore before then deciding whether to march north from Malacca (recon indicates Faber has railed 30K units to Kuala Lumpur) or to Amphib somewhere else instead.

As a sideshow I've been testing 100 x B29 night bombing from Siberoet to Soerabaya and the results have been disappointing to say the least. I managed to get up to around 20,000 fires and caused a few points of damage on industry but that's as much as I've managed to do. I hope attacks on Japan will be more successful.

On Sumatra, I've not forgotten the Jap troops starving at Prabomelih. I'll soon begin to attack them to see if they've any fight left in the 95,000 of them.

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Submarine Warfare:

No dud/missed attacks.

SS Bonefish claimed TK Ejiri Maru off Palawan on the 13th.

SS Cero damaged AO Toei Maru with a torpedo near Shanghai on the 15th. In return she was heavily damaged by the escorts.

Lots of credit to Faber for continuing the game. His economy was really toast from the time he could not evict you from the islands off Sumatra. The oil at Palembang is useless if you cannot dare send tankers/xAKs there. I hope he sticks with it to 1945 - drawing close to Japan and triggering Kamikazes makes for a different game.

No, I don't think so. Most Japanese players can produce aircraft well into 1945. If Faber can't make airplanes then he is doomed and it will come fast. Even Kamis won't help him much without some aircraft production.

This region has quietened down now with both Tinian and Guam in Allied hands. All Japanese resistance officially ended on the 25th on Guam and 26th at Tinian. Daily air raids by LBA keeps Pagan, Rota and Saipan under cover as my recently arrived B29's sit and rest at Tinian. Recon from Marcus Island has started flights over Japan. It's quite exciting to know I'll soon be launching air raids against the Mainland. On the flip side there's such a plethora of targets I don't know where to hit first I expect the first air raids to be launched in the next 2-3 days. It won't be at Tokyo though with over 350 enemy fighters present!

My fleets continue their journey back to PH. I'd say in the next 10 days every ship involved in the Mariana's Operation will be back at PH. We'll begin immediate loading and preparation for the next invasions!

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SRA:

Allied troops marched overland to Manado from Sidate and launched an immediate attack on the 25th October. Weak Japanese resistance led to Manado falling!:

Good. Allied BF's and planes will soon land. The Talaud-Eilanden invasion force is departing Ambon now and will join the CVE TF's off Manado before heading in. Talaud will be built up quickly (currently un-occupied with 0 AF) to act as a forward AF and fighter base for the invasion of Mindanao. There's been no further Japanese interference in the area after the disappointing CV combat and CL TF foray.

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Sumatra/Malaya:

The Allied attack at Proboemolih (Sumatra) on the 24th October was a failure and very disappointing to say the least:

On Malaya the 2nd phase of troops are still slowly unloading over the beaches and small port at Malacca. The flip side to having a well equipped and strong OOB with late war Allied units is they are equipment heavy and take a long time to fully unload!

I suspect it will be a further 5 days before all equipment is ashore and the troops can move south towards Johore. I've attached a current screenshot of Malaya with reported enemy troop levels.

Rather than slogging through the Malayan jungles to the north (knowing what a headache they caused me in Burma) I'm increasingly thinking of bypassing the centre of Malaya and landing further to the north or maybe even in Indo China to make the Jap forces in Malaya (and Burma) redundant.

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Submarine Warfare:

I've enough data to confirm the trend I've been seeing now. Due to the constriction of the Japanese Empire and the dismal state of her economy I'm encountering far fewer convoys and ships than previously so there's a massive reduction in the activity of my subs out there. This trend will only exacerbate IMO.

3 x dud/missed attacks.

SS Dragonet well and truly sank DD Mochizuki with 4 torpedoes north of Luzon on the 22nd.

Still awaiting some final ships to return to PH before beginning loading for the next phase of Ops.

The first Superfort raid was launched against Wakayama's Manpower on the 29th. Over 80 of them only caused 10K fires and didn't damage anything else. Disappointing, Bad weather prevented the Superforts launching on the 30th October. The weather cleared on the 31st and Osaka was hit: